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Hugh Pickens writes "Network World reports that Facebook has just released an analysis of the word usage for about one million status updates from its US English speakers with the words in updates organized into 68 different word categories based on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)--a text analysis software program that calculates the degree to which people use different categories of words across a wide array of texts. The results? To be popular on Facebook all you have to do is write longer status updates, talk about music and sports, don't be overly emotional, don't talk about your family, don't refer to time and use the word 'you' a lot. Facebook's study also confirms something that bloggers and Fox News have known for years: negative comments produce more online activity. Sure, Facebook users might click the like button more often on updates expressing positive emotion. But Facebook found you can't beat negativity for user engagement, as dismal status updates garnered more comments than positive ones."

If you have any evidence of a positive correlation between friends and "Facebook friends", now is the time to present your paper.

I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me. As there can be only one kind of relationships, that was defined face to face in a cave at the dawn of time and can never change. Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries. If they spam with uninteresting stuff I'll just remove their updates from the news feed, done.

Damn, already posted on this thread. +1 Insightful.I admit I never looked at things this way. I always sneered at all those "so-called" facebook friends. I still don't think I will jump on the FB bandwagon anytime soon, but at least I will understand/accept it a bit more.

I moved to live in Thailand around 6 months ago. This was the first time I noticed the true power of Facebook. Everything was there - people I met, places I visited, lots of pictures of the new city I would be living at and most importantly, I discovered lots of interesting new things, like a couple that bakes bread and other stuff we eat only back home and I could order from them. You didn't even really need to know so much specifics, because everything was interconnected when just knowing a few people. Ge

In the military (60's) I had orders for "Bomb disposal" in Udorn, Thailand which was very near Laos and a stones throw from North Vietnam. Lots of "Special Ops" and other stuff occurring there. That is all a distant memory anymore.

I admit I never looked at things this way. I always sneered at all those "so-called" facebook friends.

Despite the GPs post that facebook "friends" have their apropriate niche and how he's neatly integrated facebook into his life in a healthy and reasonable way. And despite the handful of inevitable me-too posts, the reality is that most people haven't looked at it that way and approached it that way... Including most facebook users.

Slashdot isn't a social networking site. I'd hazard that only a small portion of the people here actually use the journal, and those that do use it as a way of submitting a short article.

Slashdot is essentially a blog with user submitted articles that people comment on. The only reason why there's a karma sytsem at all is to help filter out the known trolls and crap posters, and it does an alright job of that.

Or in other words, apart from a very superficial, community of people posting on a subject there isn't really a whole lot of similarity.

There was an attempt at a real community here, but it ultimately failed, with many members migrating en mass to other sites, due largely to/. having really poor tools for social stuff. I think/. would be better off if it did embrace the community aspect a bit more, at least providing the tools needed to those that are interested.

Slashdot is like democracy. It sucks major ass, but at least it's better than anything else we've ever tried. The comments here are very very enlightening much more so than any other website I've seen, but the stories suck, editors suck, and the comments themselves quixotically suck. (every good comment has like 50 comments so bad, the universe weeps)

Yeah, the comments here are better, even better than Ars, Anandtech, etc, which always surprises me, given how much better the articles at those places are. That's the moderation system at work though - if I use a flat view, with all comments visible, my opinion of the comments here suddenly drops like a rock.

I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me.

It shouldn't baffle you if you've spent any time at all in the real world. On the internet, someone is just a face and a name, and any deeper relationship is delusion. There are no expressions, no gestures, and no intonation, and most importantly, no physical aspect, so talking and interacting are only a shadow of what they are in the real world. I would argue that the depth of friendship is dependent on the depth of interaction, and using the internet as a medium necessarily restricts that.

Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries.

I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me.

It shouldn't baffle you if you've spent any time at all in the real world.

I clearly haven't spent any time in your world.

On the internet, someone is just a face and a name, and any deeper relationship is delusion.

Who said I only know them on the Internet? It's just one of several ways to interact.

There are no expressions, no gestures, and no intonation, and most importantly, no physical aspect, so talking and interacting are only a shadow of what they are in the real world. I would argue that the depth of friendship is dependent on the depth of interaction, and using the internet as a medium necessarily restricts that.

And, tell me, how do you keep up this intense face to face contact, which seems the only thing that counts, with friends living on the other side of the world?

Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries.

"Sometimes sharing or discussing something funny" is NOT a qualification for friendship.

Jesus man, lighten up. I said it was one aspect. What do you do with friends at a pub?

Websites do that. TV shows do that. Neither of those entities are friends, and neither are the actors, characters, or writers related to them. I agree that social structures change, but that's exactly why we can draw a distinction between a Facebook friend and a real friend. Having a hundred Facebook friends is the equivalent of a celebrity having a hundred fans. Are they people that say they like you? Sure. Might you like them back? Yeah, it's possible. Could you get something valuable out of the relationship? Sure, why not. But at the end of the day, these are names you know, or rather, names that know you. The relationship is shallow, much more shallow than a true friendship.

Thanks for putting me, my life and my friends in your place.

"There is no greater love than this, that one lays down his life for his friend." THAT'S a real friend. How many of your Facebook "friends" would do the same? How many of them could EVER conceivably do the same?

You're very black and white categorical about being either a "real" friend

Mod++
The problem seems to stem from the Facebook use of the word 'friend'. If they called it 'acquaintance', or 'connection' there probably wouldn't be such a big deal. But using the word 'friend' seems to strike a nerve with so many people, I wonder why that is? I've never heard anyone give anyone stick for having lots of Linked-in 'friends'.

No evidence required. It was a response to the GGP's assertion that there was a positive correlation between number of facebook friends and number of real world friends. There is no reasonable basis for the assumption that there was a connection.

It's rather clever of you to turn it into a false dilemma, given that there could be a positive correlation, a negative correlation or no correlation at all. Rather deft of you to ignore that last one.

From the charts, they range from -0.04 to +0.10 for the classifications given. Now I'm no statistician, but those ranges of values don't seem to be much more than a slight tendency. They certainly don't seem to me to be "dead cert" formulae for getting more comments or likes.

The measure for correlations used is r. We would actually expect the correlation coefficients to be low, since there are so much more to status updates not captured by the word counts. The correlations coloured are statistically significant, though.

...so your observation is correct.

On the other hand, from my own experience, the decisive factors in determining the "popularity" of a status update are
1) real-life popularity of that person (you don't add only virtual "friends", do you?) and
2) that person's tendency to "like" and repeatedly comment on his own status updates
Now I'm no statistician as well and I have no studies to back me up. Duh.

Online popularity is not the same as real life popularity. Online I can have a hot chixxor avatar and become popular quickly without having to really work for it. Occasionally, I can post hot pictures of women and talk about things that appeal to everybody.

Do that for a while and word of mouth grows. As opposed to in real life where I'd be expected to meet most of those people, or at least notice that they exist.

Doing that is almost certain to guarantee a huge number of "friends" but really once the n

I think the word "friend" as it is used on Facebook should really be something else. Maybe "associate" or "interesting person" would fit the bill. If instead of "friending" someone you "linked" to them, or "subscribed" to their updates, I could see the dynamics changing. Same functionality, different mindset and expectations. Perhaps even less stress and offence taken when "unfriending" - these would become "unsubscribe", "unlink" - something less personal. I'm sure someone could whip up a browser addo

"...all you have to do is write longer status updates, talk about music and sports, don't be overly emotional, don't talk about your family, don't refer to time and use the word 'you' a lot.

Uh, don't talk about family? Don't refer to time? What's next, we shouldn't talk about friends either? Seems to me they're kind of missing the whole point of Facebook. I don't think it was meant to be a sports and music site.

And what kills me is since when did Facebook need to become a popularity contest? There's no "winner" for who has the most "friends". It's an extended address book to stay connected with friends and family when you really break it down. YOUR friends and family, not friends of friends of friends families (kind of starts sounding like the old jokes that start with "my cousins best friends sisters roommates dog groomer"). And all the other bullshit on there (games, polls, puzzles) are all just revenue streams for Facebook, which don't really change the whole point of the site.

And as far as people who run entire businesses off Facebook and nothing else, do yourself a favor now and stop being cheap and just get your own domain and host your own site. Because when the popularity of Facebook dies, so will your company.

Likewise if someone else has 3 friends, who are all just their immediate family and has locked every privacy setting as far down as possible to limit anyone else seeing anything and they are happy with that than more power to them.

I'm not sure if that was just hypothetical, but I do actually know people who do that. Indeed, more power to them.

They never even define "popular". I would assume popular means the number of friends you have or some other metric. There are people on FB that have a good number of friends that are really obnoxious (at least to me) to have as friends on FB.

A friend of mine on FB who has over 4,000 friends is a nationally known guitar player/singer in a band.

It doesn't even take that much to see nothing on Facebook. I don't give Facebook Javascript access, and I found their new profiles don't load without Javascript. Then soon after, nothing else on the site loads without Javascript. I get essentially a blank page (with a few static layout items).

Doesn't matter to me as I only have a Facebook account so people can find me (recently reconnected with a childhood school friend, for example). I mostly just find it interesting that there is no Facebook for me wi

What I'm seeing is that using certain keywords will attract people to your site. What a discovery! If only someone had figured this out a decade ago we could have, I don't know, some sort of "engines" to help us with our searches for stuff that interest us.

"don't talk about your family": subconscious rule to suppress the guilt both FB posters and readers might experience due to the fact that spending time on FB is by definition cheating (== stealing time from your family). Somehow I sense a similarity of this rule with the Mickey Mouse universe, where parents don't exist (only uncles, aunts, nieces and cousins).

"don't refer to time": subconscious rule strongly related to the previous one (spare time should be spent with the family) and also used to suppress t